Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (9 page)

"Hey, Dwight," she called up the narrow steps to the bridge. "Got a minute?"

"One," he returned.

It was the end of his shift. Dwight was a family man and not one to dawdle when his working day was done. Pulling herself up in a vain attempt to spare her leg, Anna was annoyed to find she was breathing hard. Physical stamina after forty wasn't a given, it had to be earned.

"What time did you see me on Island Three and radio it in?" she asked.

"You're not mad, are you?" he asked with surprise.

"Nope. Just curious."

"I don't know. Maybe eight or so."

"Where was I?"

Dwight laughed nervously. "This an IQ test?"

Anna waited.

"Sort of in the trees there between the buildings."

"Earlier you said something to Patsy about my being a middle-aged mutant ninja ranger. What was that about?"

Dwight looked pained. "No offense meant," he said.

"No, no," she reassured him. "None taken. Just curious about the image."

Dwight was still uncertain whether or not he was being taken to task in some arcane manner. "You know those turtle things from a while back? That's all."

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" Anna asked.

"Yeah. Just trying to be funny. We got any comers, Cal?" he hollered out the window to let Anna know it was time to leave. The dock was obviously deserted.

"The rhythm. I get it," Anna said hurriedly. "Teenage/middle-aged, turtle/ranger. What put the picture in your head?"

Dwight was suddenly absorbed in fiddling with his radar.

"Other than me being middle-aged?"

"You said it, not me." Then: "You know, just those ninja men all dressed in black. Got a stowaway, Cal," he called to the deckhand in hopes of getting rid of Anna.

"That's it?" she asked. "The person you saw was dressed in black?"

"That's it," Dwight said.

"Terrific." Anna backed down the stairs. "Thanks a heap. Regards to Digby. Good night." Cal handed her off the boat and for another brief moment she was allowed to feel like a lady.

Around eight o'clock, Dwight said. She'd been inside the wards from five-thirty till she'd stumbled out to be caught by Billy Bonham. Black, Dwight had said, a ninja. She'd been dressed in khaki shorts and a red shirt. Whoever Dwight saw, it wasn't her. Whoever he saw hadn't been authorized to be there. And whoever it was had been leaving the area immediately after the stairs fell from under her.

It had to be coincidence. Surely even she couldn't make a mortal enemy in only three days.

7

Anna caught an early boat for Manhattan, the
Liberty IV
captained this morning by Kevin. He wasn't alone on the bridge. A slender, handsome man of indeterminate age sat in Anna's spot drinking coffee from a fat-bottomed plastic mug. Trey Claypool. Anna remembered a hurried introduction in the hall when she'd first come to Ellis. Claypool was the Assistant Superintendent, an often thankless job. Not unlike vice president but without the entertainment factor of going to galas. Assistant superintendent was a way station for the upwardly mobile or a parking place for burnouts and black sheep that the Park Service couldn't get rid of and never intended to grant the power of a superintendency. Anna had no idea whether Claypool was on the fast track or had been shunted off onto a siding. There was something off-putting about the man. Lack of facial expression: either he was brain-dead or so adept at hiding his emotions that not so much as a twinkle showed through.
Eyes like a carp,
Anna thought as she backed unseen down the stairs from the bridge.

In the open area on the stem Billy Bonham, riding home after the night shift on Ellis, stood under the Stars and Stripes gazing back at Lady Liberty. Both of them looked fine in the morning sun: healthy, vibrant and forever young. Pleased with the picture, Anna joined the policeman.

"Good morning," she said, just to watch him smile. She was disappointed. Billy looked at her and his face was drawn, pale under the beginnings of a summer tan. His thick honey-colored hair was greasy, as if he'd been running his hands through it. There was no smile to alleviate his gray cast, just a pained expression tinged with doubt and sadness.

"You look like shit," Anna said kindly. Maybe it was the wind off the water, but she could have sworn his eyes teared up in the moment before he turned away. It seemed rude to just run off and leave him but that was her plan. Who knew what to do with weepy men? He was too young to sleep with and too old to hold on her lap. "Looks like it's going to be another nice day," she murmured, preparatory to sidling away and scuttling to the far end of the boat.

"I've got to find another line of work," Billy said, aborting her escape. His voice was heavy with the unselfconscious melodrama of youth.

"There's lots of things to do," Anna said, not yet giving up hope of retaining her God-given right to indifference.

"I've never wanted to be anything else. Never will," Bonham said stubbornly.

Anna capitulated, leaning both elbows on the rail beside him. "A drag," she agreed.

"Do you ever see things?" he asked suddenly.

Anna had braced herself for a tale of star-crossed love or boss-crossed ambition. The question caught her off guard and she answered truthfully: "Sometimes." Immediately she wished she hadn't. Public servants entrusted with deadly weapons were strongly discouraged from admitting any symptoms of mental instability.

"What sort of things?" Billy pressed.

"Why?"

The policeman hadn't faced her since his eyes filled with tears, and he didn't now, but let his words blow over the stem to be carried away on the wake of the
Liberty IV.
"I need to know."

Anna watched him, the profile still rounded from his teens, a square forehead free of lines and cheeks more suited to down than whiskers. He really did seem to need to know. Hoping she wasn't opening the door to some unwelcome and eminently reportable revelation, she told him.

"Cats, mostly. When I'm tired or distracted I sometimes see cats out of the corner of my eye. Then they aren't there. It used to scare me," she said, in case that was what he was worried about, that he was going nuts. "Now I'm used to it. They keep down the hallucinatory mice."

"Cats? Is that it?" He sounded so disappointed she half wished she had a more impressive delusion to relate.

"Just cats," she admitted, feeling she'd let him down. He slid back into morose silence. "Why?" she asked again. "What do you see?"

"Who said I see anything?" Abruptly, he left her with the cracking of the flag. Through the windows of the passenger cabin she saw him slide onto a bench and slump against the wall as if instantly asleep.

Set up, then snubbed, Anna chose to spend the rest of the short trip without the dubious pleasure of human companionship.

Frederick was already at the hospital. "Your sister's beau has been here since the cock crowed," she was informed by a plump and kindly woman in white pants and tunic as she made her way down the all too familiar hallway in the ICU.

Creepy butterflies stirred in the region of her duodenum. Anna stopped at the water fountain to examine the infestation of lepidoptera before exposing herself to the FBI guy and the shadow of her only sibling.

Was she still in love with Frederick? That one was easy. She'd never been in love with him; not like she'd loved Zach, not like she knew love could be. A memory of love that, on the Romeo and Juliet Principle, grew more perfect with the untimely demise of one of the participants. And, Molly had told her more than once, a memory that tolled the death knell for any relationship she might attempt with a man not perfect enough to be dead.

Possessiveness then: Frederick had been hers. Now he was "her sister's beau." Though Molly was too ill to take note of the fact. Closer, Anna thought, and pinned one of her inner butterflies to the corkboard.
Hers.
That was the key. Not that Frederick Stanton was in any way hers. That illusion had died with nary a whimper two years before.
Molly
was hers. Hers to rescue, to bring back to life, to repay, to save, to be a hero for.

And Frederick was the usurper.

"Do you load up camel-like and then go without drinking for weeks in the desert?" A voice so low it came to her almost as a thought murmured behind her.

"Dr. Madison," Anna said.

"David."

A tiny qualm twisted amongst Anna's butterfly collection. "Can I call you Doctor?" she asked, knowing she sounded mildly pathetic. "A doctor is better than a David, given the givens."

"Feel free to call me Captain America if it helps." He smiled and, despite the graying beard, bifocals and balding head, looked boyish. "Can I get you a canteen or anything?"

Anna realized she still had her thumb on the button, letting the stream sparkle by. "Sorry," she said. "I was thinking."

"What about?" Pushing his glasses up on his head and holding his stethoscope back the way a woman would her hair, he bent over the drinking fountain. Beside him it looked too small, like the chairs in a nursery school.

"I was thinking about Molly," Anna said, wondering what chemical imbalance rendered her so honest and forthcoming this morning. "I want to do whatever she needs. Even if it's not me."

"You will," Dr. Madison replied, just as if she'd made sense. "Who's the boyfriend?"

He sounded as protective of Molly as she felt and Anna began to actually like the man. They walked together toward Molly's room. Madison hunched over to hear as Anna gave him a brief and highly edited version of Frederick Stanton's
raison d'etre.
One of two beepers clipped to his belt summoned him away and she traversed the last twenty feet of linoleum alone.

Two feet shy of Molly's door, she stopped. His back to the window opening into the hall, Frederick sat in the red chair, a worm-eaten guitar resting on his bony lap. Soundlessly, Anna turned the knob and eased open the door. He was singing and not too badly. A light, sure tenor voice accompanied by rusty fingering of half-remembered chords: "I do love to breathe, I do love to breathe, like a whale too long under, I do love to breathe."

The words were ludicrous, but the sense of having heard the song before nagged at Anna. Recognition came. Frederick had stolen the tune from the old spiritual "I Will Not Be Moved."

"Hey," Anna said, to announce her presence.

"Hey your ownself," he returned, and: "Look who's breathing just as if she was born to it."

Molly had been taken off the respirator and Anna watched the miraculous rise and fall of her chest unaided by Columbia-Presbyterian's machines. "So slow," Anna whispered.

"Evidently--"

"Shhh." Anna pulled a pocket watch from her jeans and timed the breaths for sixty seconds. "Eleven," she said. "Not bad. Not
bad,"
she repeated, and laughed. "It's fucking great. Move over." She butted her way half onto the red chair with a shove of her hip and stared down at her sister. "I think she's pinking up some. Do you? I think so," she said, without waiting for him to reply. A great geyser of optimism was bubbling up within her. "I'm undoing her hands," she said. "Play something that will make her remember. Something locked into our collective psyches."

Dimly, Anna was aware of Frederick, his thigh pressed against hers, fumbling with the guitar and humming pieces of music as he tried to remember. "It's been a while," he said.

"We don't care." Molly's hands were free of the restraints and Anna watched her fingers curl. She knew Molly was close, she could feel it.

"Used to be I could sing 'Kumbaya' with the best of them."

"Do it," Anna demanded. "Anything."

Softly, but hitting each note with precision, Frederick began singing the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun."

"It's been a long time since you've been here." Anna whispered words she'd not known she remembered.

Molly opened her eyes. It wasn't just a reflex, Molly was there.

"Did we wake you?" Anna asked, and was horrified to hear her voice break. Molly's hand moved and Anna started, but she wasn't reaching for the feeding tube, only to reassure herself the breathing tube was gone. "It's out," Anna said. "You can talk." Then, lest she be pushing too hard, she added: "If you want to."

"Anna," came out, a dry creak.

"Yes. Yes. It's me," Anna responded, as if Molly had answered a complex trigonometry question correctly. She was rewarded by a look of irritation. Anna laughed and the tears boiled up underneath. Lest Molly sense them, she clamped her jaws shut till they drained away.

"I thought..." Molly's eyes drifted from Anna. They clouded suddenly with alarm. "Frederick--" Molly said, and closed her eyes. Retreating.

Anna grabbed her hand. "Frederick Stanton," she said firmly. "I asked him to come."

Molly's eyes fluttered but stayed closed.

"What are we going to do?" Anna heard an edge of hysteria in her voice and forced herself to take several deep, slow breaths through her nose.